Skip to contents

Overview

rplanes features a Shiny app that allows users to interact with package functions to perform plausibility analysis for epidemiological signals. The rplanes Explorer app is developed and maintained as part of the R package. Users can launch the app locally or use it on a hosted Shiny server by running the rplanes_explorer() function.

Analysis steps

The application allows users to run plausibility analysis with several steps:

  1. Select the type of signal to be evaluated
  2. Upload data to use for the plausibility analysis seed
  3. Upload data containing the signal to be evaluated (or for an observed signal identify the number of points to evaluate)
  4. Enter the resolution, outcome, and forecast horizon (if applicable)
  5. Optionally modify default parameters used for analysis
  6. Click “Analyze”

Example data

The app includes example data to help users familiarize themselves with the plausibility analysis features. The example is based on observed data originally obtained from healthdata.gov and is the flu admissions (“previous_day_admission_influenza_confirmed” field) aggregated by location and epidemiological week. The data includes all states and national resolution for the United States. A selection of the observed data used in the example is provided below:

date epiyear epiweek location flu.admits
2022-02-12 2022 6 US 1256
2022-02-19 2022 7 US 1573
2022-02-26 2022 8 US 1666
2022-03-05 2022 9 US 1942
2022-03-12 2022 10 US 2247
2022-03-19 2022 11 US 2878
2022-03-26 2022 12 US 3008
2022-04-02 2022 13 US 3182
2022-04-09 2022 14 US 3331
. . . . .

The example forecast data set evaluated was selected from the CDC FluSight hospitalization forecasts submitted during the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 influenza seasons. A selection of the forecast data used in the example is provided below:

forecast_date target target_end_date location type quantile value
2022-10-31 1 wk ahead inc flu hosp 2022-11-05 02 point NA 6
2022-10-31 2 wk ahead inc flu hosp 2022-11-12 02 point NA 5
2022-10-31 3 wk ahead inc flu hosp 2022-11-19 02 point NA 5
2022-10-31 4 wk ahead inc flu hosp 2022-11-26 02 point NA 5
2022-10-31 1 wk ahead inc flu hosp 2022-11-05 02 quantile 0.01 0
2022-10-31 2 wk ahead inc flu hosp 2022-11-12 02 quantile 0.01 0
2022-10-31 3 wk ahead inc flu hosp 2022-11-19 02 quantile 0.01 0
2022-10-31 4 wk ahead inc flu hosp 2022-11-26 02 quantile 0.01 0
2022-10-31 1 wk ahead inc flu hosp 2022-11-05 02 quantile 0.025 0
. . . . . . .

Usage

Inputs and outputs

The app includes inputs for the type of signal to be evaluated, file uploads (as needed), and parameter modifications. Once analysis is complete, the output of the analysis is displayed visually to the user as a collection of plots and tables. The “Help” tab on the app includes more detailed information on all of the inputs and outputs for the explorer app.

Launching the app

The app is delivered as a function in the rplanes package. To launch the app, users can run the rplanes_explorer() function. Note that this function wraps shiny::runApp() and inherits arguments. For example, adding an argument for launch.browser = TRUE will open the app in a web browser and setting port = 80 will run the app at port 80 on the localhost.

library(rplanes)
rplanes_explorer(host = "0.0.0.0", launch.browser = TRUE, port = 80)